This is what so many of you wanted, Penn State fans. This is what makes your blood run, what gets Beaver Stadium whipped into a frenzy.

It's not 12-play drives to field goals. It's not even graceful, looping touchdown passes.

It's the terror of a defense with fangs. Not one that sits back in an umbrella and sponges the opponent to death but a defense that takes risks for big rewards. That blitzes from all angles, crumples quarterbacks and instills fear.

That's what you've said you want. Well, Ted Roof looks like your kind of guy. The style of Penn State's new defensive coordinator is about aggression. He promises to order schemes you've not often seen under the reactive regime of Joe Paterno.

In a half-hour one-on-one interview in his office at PSU's Lasch football complex on Friday, the former Georgia Tech linebacker and longtime major-college head coach and assistant laid out his vision for what a defense should be:

“I think you've gotta be multiply aggressive. There's gonna be three components, to me, to playing great defense:

“Number one, you gotta stop the run. Because if you can't, that's a headache that won't go away. Also, from a philosophical standpoint, a physical defense that can stop the run, that's kind of the physical barometer for your football team. If a team can shove it down your throat, that's demoralizing.

“We'll commit as many to the box as it takes to do that, I don't care. Now the secondary coach might. [Roof laughed.] Some weeks, that may be seven, others eight, others nine. But we gotta hang our hat on that.

“Number two, you gotta affect the quarterback. There's a lot of different ways to do that. But you can't let the quarterback sit back there and pat the ball and go to his second or third reads. Doesn't mean you have to sack him every time. But you have to do things to affect him.

“Quarterbacks are too good today. Offensive systems are too good. You can get nickel and dimed with the throwing game.

“And third thing you gotta do is defend the deep ball. You do all those things, you're gonna play great defense and win a lot of games.”

Penn State has already played great defense and won a lot of games in recent years. Defense has rarely been the problem.

Which puts Roof in a precarious situation as the new guy. What fans say they want is bone-rattling aggression. What they really want is wins. And, say what you like about the stay-at-home, cover-two-zone and largely blitz-less defenses of Paterno and his longtime coordinator Tom Bradley, they surrendered few points. Yes, the scheme was conservative.

“And it worked,” acknowledged Roof without prompting. “They played great defense here for a long time.”

But every man has to be true to himself and there's a little swashbuckler in this guy. At 48 years old, Roof is extremely personable in an effortless Southern manner in casual company. But his history both as a player and a coach indicates a man in the workplace who has little use for those who aren't all in.

Patriot-News/Joe HermittTed Roof in his new office in the Lasch Football Building.

“What I believe is that we've gotta do everything we can so that people understand their jobs and can execute their jobs at full speed,” said Roof. “And if something's not full speed, I have a very short fuse – with people who aren't committed or don't work or are not giving us everything they have.”

Roof is a Georgia native and was a heralded recruit out of high school. As an all-ACC linebacker at Georgia Tech in the mid-'80s, Roof teamed with future NFL All-Pro Pat Swilling to form the core of head coach Bill Curry's “Black Watch” defense that helped resurrect a destitute program. Curry, now head coach at FCS Georgia State, remembers one thing above all else about Roof as a young player:

“He dominated the team from the time he showed up [1982]. We had a veteran team that was not very tough and had not been accustomed to winning [2-19-1 in the two previous seasons]. And he began to accost people and take them on – usually in the right way but not always. He just wouldn't put up with anything but everybody's best.

“He quickly became the best leader on the team. And he developed into the best leader I ever coached.”

By Roof's senior season, the Yellow Jackets were 9-2-1, finished second in the ACC and beat Michigan State in what was just their second bowl game in 13 years.

Which is all fine. But what skeptical, booked-up PSU fans want to know is this: Can Roof's passion translate into wins as a major assistant coach?

The cold facts are these: Roof has had a choppy go of it in two of the biggest challenges of his coaching career, both of them recent. There are extenuating circumstances in each case.

As defensive coordinator at Auburn (2009-2011), his aggressive schematics differed from that preferred by head coach Gene Chizik. What resulted was a bastardization of the plan. Chizik insisted on the more conservative “Tampa Two” cover-two zone with the middle linebacker often dropping deep into coverage – not Roof's style.

Though the Tigers won the 2010 national title, Gus Malzahn's offense featuring Heisman winner Cam Newton won star billing, even though Roof's defense shut down a dynamic Oregon offense averaging 47 points to just 19 in the BCS championship game.

When Newton departed, the Auburn defense could not compensate. Last season, it allowed a school-record-worst 406 yards per game.

“I don't wanna get into that deal,” said Roof when asked about the disconnect in philosophy with Chizik. “I just wanna kinda move forward and tell what I wanna do.”

As head coach at Duke, Roof took on a task that no one has been able to solve. Duke football is the Indiana of the ACC. It's had one winning season in the last 22. The Blue Devils have been to two bowls in the last half-century and have not been ranked once in all that time. Only Steve Spurrier had any success there (1988-89) and he quickly left for Florida.

As a first-time head coach, Roof was in over his head at such a place. In his five seasons (2003-07), the Devils went 6-45. Still, he does not regret taking the chance:

“I was at a point in my career where I had an opportunity to be a head coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference and it was a great experience. Didn't win many games. Learned a lot. So the next time that I get that chance, I'll have learned a lot from it.

“You focus on the positives and the takeaways. At the same time, that's a real tough gig. Especially in my tenure.

“But it's made me a better assistant. When you're the head coach, everybody's problems end up on your desk. Once you say you're ready and you think you know everything that's entailed, well, you don't know until you've done it.

“Until I did it, I didn't get it. I got some of it. But I got it all now. Understanding the demands on a head coach. I understand the value of an assistant who handles his problems and doesn't take them other places.”

Does he still want to be a head coach then? Yes, with a qualifier:

“I won't take an opportunity just to be a head coach. But at that point in my career, I did.”

For now, he is Bill O'Brien's wingman. This is the third staff on which they've worked together. Had George O'Leary, their onetime boss at Georgia Tech, not been caught padding his resume soon after being hired at Notre Dame, they would have been his Irish coordinators.

From Roof's description, he and O'Brien are yin and yang, complementary in their temperament and their competitive tensility.

“We used to go against each other [at Tech] every day. Had great battles, great fun. Really competed.”

The relationship between coordinators is often tense and distant. They coach competing units that can develop very different personalities. It can all resemble an Ultimate Fighter reality show if the two lead assistants don't see the big picture.

But Roof said he's never had that sort of contentious relationship with his new boss:

“It was really close. Because I had such respect for him. He's a team guy, he's a grinder. And he cares about kids as something other than quarterbacks who can throw the deep ball or guys who can score touchdowns or guys who can rush the passer or play man coverage.”

It was the close friendship and, no doubt considerably heftier compensation and prestige, that ultimately trumped that with their old boss. O'Leary had plucked – some say rescued – Roof from a possible firing or demotion at Auburn and hired him on as DC at Central Florida in December. Barely a month later, Roof was out the door answering O'Brien's call at Penn State amid the January recruiting climax. Ire was raised in Orlando.

Now, O'Brien and Roof and so many on this new staff will attempt to turn the unique trick of the prior regime, something with which they are not acquainted – staying around a while. College coaching is notorious for its transience. It uproots families like the military, setting them down every few years in a strange place.

So, its been for Roof. This is his 10th stop in 25 years. He's been in every corner east of the Mississippi from Massachusetts to Alabama, Minnesota to Carolina. He, his wife Pam and 13-year-old twin sons Terrence Davis (T.D.) and Michael Edwin are shaking hands again.

“It's hard to explain but it's become a way of life,” said Roof. “It's just part of the business. You try to entrench yourself in the community and spread your roots out and get them down. Because, in this business, you don't know how long you're gonna be there.

“But there's a lot of value in that, too, because I've been to some wonderful places and met some wonderful people at every stop. And for young kids, it puts them into situations where they have to learn how to meet people.”

“As a young coach, I think moving around is a good thing. Because it exposes you to a lot of different ways of doing things. Opens up your network. With every stop, you learn something. Whether it's how you wanna do something or how you don't wanna do something. You learn from everything.”

Ted Roof is no longer a young coach. He's smack in the middle of his life and career, a nomad looking to sink an anchor somewhere.

If Penn State turns out to be that place, it'll mean everyone in the harbor is happy.

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